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Related papers: Rethinking Aleatoric and Epistemic Uncertainty

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Much of uncertainty quantification to date has focused on determining the effect of variables modeled probabilistically, and with a known distribution, on some physical or engineering system. We develop methods to obtain information on the…

Numerical Analysis · Mathematics 2015-03-19 Kamaljit Chowdhary , Paul Dupuis

We address the problem of uncertainty quantification and propose measures of total, aleatoric, and epistemic uncertainty based on a known decomposition of (strictly) proper scoring rules, a specific type of loss function, into a divergence…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-29 Paul Hofman , Yusuf Sale , Eyke Hüllermeier

Trustworthy ML systems should not only return accurate predictions, but also a reliable representation of their uncertainty. Bayesian methods are commonly used to quantify both aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty, but alternative…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-09-11 Mira Jürgens , Nis Meinert , Viktor Bengs , Eyke Hüllermeier , Willem Waegeman

Supporting model interpretability for complex phenomena where annotators can legitimately disagree, such as emotion recognition, is a challenging machine learning task. In this work, we show that explicitly quantifying the uncertainty in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-10-08 Asma Ghandeharioun , Brian Eoff , Brendan Jou , Rosalind W. Picard

This paper proposes strategies for designing a system whose computational model is subject to aleatory and epistemic uncertainty. Aleatory variables, which are caused by randomness in physical parameters, are draws from a possibly unknown…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-02-18 Luis G. Crespo

Decomposing prediction uncertainty into aleatoric (irreducible) and epistemic (reducible) components is critical for the reliable deployment of machine learning systems. While the mutual information between the response variable and model…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-02-10 Anchit Jain , Stephen Bates

Despite AI's impressive achievements, including recent advances in generative and large language models, there remains a significant gap in the ability of AI systems to handle uncertainty and generalize beyond their training data. AI models…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-06-30 Shireen Kudukkil Manchingal , Andrew Bradley , Julian F. P. Kooij , Keivan Shariatmadar , Neil Yorke-Smith , Fabio Cuzzolin

Uncertainty quantification is at the core of the reliability and robustness of machine learning. In this paper, we provide a theoretical framework to dissect the uncertainty, especially the \textit{epistemic} component, in deep learning…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-21 Ziyi Huang , Henry Lam , Haofeng Zhang

Predictions and forecasts of machine learning models should take the form of probability distributions, aiming to increase the quantity of information communicated to end users. Although applications of probabilistic prediction and…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-03-19 Hristos Tyralis , Georgia Papacharalampous

Exploration is a significant challenge in practical reinforcement learning (RL), and uncertainty-aware exploration that incorporates the quantification of epistemic and aleatory uncertainty has been recognized as an effective exploration…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-08 Parvin Malekzadeh , Ming Hou , Konstantinos N. Plataniotis

This position paper reflects on the state-of-the-art in decision-making under uncertainty. A classical assumption is that probabilities can sufficiently capture all uncertainty in a system. In this paper, the focus is on the uncertainty…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2023-03-13 Thom Badings , Thiago D. Simão , Marnix Suilen , Nils Jansen

The problem of incorporating information from observations received serially in time is widespread in the field of uncertainty quantification. Within a probabilistic framework, such problems can be addressed using standard filtering…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-12-02 Chatchuea Kimchaiwong , Jeremie Houssineau , Adam M. Johansen

Quantitative characterizations and estimations of uncertainty are of fundamental importance in optimization and decision-making processes. Herein, we propose intuitive scores, which we call certainty and doubt, that can be used in both a…

The overall predictive uncertainty of a trained predictor can be decomposed into separate contributions due to epistemic and aleatoric uncertainty. Under a Bayesian formulation, assuming a well-specified model, the two contributions can be…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-22 Sharu Theresa Jose , Sangwoo Park , Osvaldo Simeone

Quantifying the uncertainty of supervised learning models plays an important role in making more reliable predictions. Epistemic uncertainty, which usually is due to insufficient knowledge about the model, can be reduced by collecting more…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-01-27 Xinlei Zhou , Han Liu , Farhad Pourpanah , Tieyong Zeng , Xizhao Wang

Real-world data contains aleatoric uncertainty - irreducible noise arising from imperfect measurements or from incomplete knowledge about the data generation process. Mean-variance estimation networks can learn this type of uncertainty but…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-29 Jiaxiang Yi , Miguel A. Bessa

Algorithmic modeling relies on limited information in data to extrapolate outcomes for unseen scenarios, often embedding an element of arbitrariness in its decisions. A perspective on this arbitrariness that has recently gained interest is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-11 Prakhar Ganesh , Afaf Taik , Golnoosh Farnadi

Recent research reveals that machine learning (ML) models are highly sensitive to minor changes in their training procedure, such as the inclusion or exclusion of a single data point, leading to conflicting predictions on individual data…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-15 Falaah Arif Khan , Denys Herasymuk , Nazar Protsiv , Julia Stoyanovich

Estimating and disentangling epistemic uncertainty, uncertainty that is reducible with more training data, and aleatoric uncertainty, uncertainty that is inherent to the task at hand, is critically important when applying machine learning…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-08 Matthew A. Chan , Maria J. Molina , Christopher A. Metzler

Proper quantification of predictive uncertainty is essential for the use of machine learning in safety-critical applications. Various uncertainty measures have been proposed for this purpose, typically claiming superiority over other…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-16 Paul Hofman , Yusuf Sale , Eyke Hüllermeier